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Pixies Motor On, With New Bassist

The new lineup of the Pixies, from left: Kim Shattuck, David Lovering, Black Francis and Joey Santiago.Credit
Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times

A couple of years ago, when the Pixies were almost 300 concerts into their second life as reunited heroes of alternative rock, they played a casino in Canada. The symbolism stopped them for a moment: had the Pixies succumbed to stereotype and become an oldies act?

“It was like, Ha ha, here we are at the casino,” Charles Thompson, a k a Black Francis, the lead singer, said in an interview recently. “Is this the shape of things to come?”

Now, taking a step they had put off since returning in 2004, the Pixies are finally releasing the equivalent of a new album, their first in 22 years. After teasing fans in June with a new song, “Bagboy,” the band issued the four-song “EP-1” early on Tuesday, the first in a series of mini-releases it plans to put out sporadically over the next 15 months.

Selling new material on the reunion circuit is never easy, and the bar is high for the Pixies, whose juxtaposition of the jagged, sweet and darkly comic on albums like “Surfer Rosa” (1988) and “Doolittle” (1989) have influenced generations of bands. But the new music also comes just weeks after the announcement that Kim Deal, the bassist and perhaps most beloved member, was leaving the group, raising the question of whether fans will accept the Pixies without her.

New music was always on the bucket list for the Pixies, even if the members were ambivalent about it. In 2004, the band released two songs, “Bam Thwok” and a cover of Warren Zevon’s “Ain’t That Pretty at All,” but nothing followed.

Photo

The new Pixies EP.

For a while, it didn’t seem to matter. The reunited band, which also includes the guitarist Joey Santiago and the drummer David Lovering, has played 324 concerts around the world, and sold about $65 million in tickets, according to its management. Eventually, though, some new fuel was needed to keep the train moving and the musicians feeling inspired.

“If we’re going to keep touring like this, we need some kind of new story, a new life, something,” Mr. Thompson said over lunch on a weekend day trip to Manhattan from western Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and five children.

Last fall, the band booked a studio in the bucolic Welsh countryside with Gil Norton, who produced three of the Pixies’ five original studio albums. According to the remaining Pixies, Ms. Deal — who clashed with Mr. Thompson in the band’s first incarnation — was present at the start of the sessions but then abruptly announced that she could not continue. Through a spokeswoman, Ms. Deal declined to comment. (She is currently on a reunion tour with her own band, the Breeders.)

“It took us three days to mourn about it,” Mr. Santiago said of Ms. Deal’s departure, and then the men decided to continue without her.

“I hate to say it, but I’m not going to let one snafu get in the way,” he added in a recent interview after a rehearsal in Los Angeles with Mr. Lovering. “It’s time to put on the guitar. It’s time to shine. No one is going to take that away from me.”

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From left, David Lovering, Black Francis and Kim Deal.Credit
George Pimentel/WireImage

To help the band find its sound after so many years, Mr. Norton gave them a riddle. Referring to an old Pixies song, he had them imagine that for all this time they had been off playing on the Planet of Sound, and only now returning to Earth.

The results are less screamy and uptight than the old Pixies. But plenty of their defining obsessions are still there, like the twangy surf guitar and sci-fi surrealism on “Andro Queen.” Mr. Santiago, who in his non-Pixies career has made music for television and film, said that he “scored” his parts to add outer-space atmospherics.

“Another Toe in the Ocean” and “What Goes Boom” are more straightforward rock, but on “Indie Cindy” — for which the band also released a video on Tuesday — the band uses some of the sudden dynamic shifts that were its most recognizable signature. Mr. Thompson describes the track as a love song that reflects the anxiety of trying to seduce his audience all over again. “Indie Cindy, be in love with me,” he sings. “I beg for you to carry me.”

“It’s all about self-doubt,” Mr. Thompson explained. “It says to the audience: ‘I don’t know if this romance has still got what it needs to happen again. I don’t know if you’ll accept me; I don’t know if I accept you. But we have this memory. Can we do it again?’ ”

For the recording sessions, the band recruited Simon Archer, a k a Ding, who has played with PJ Harvey and the Fall. Kim Shattuck of the band the Muffs will fill in on the band’s latest tour, which comes to the Bowery Ballroom and the Music Hall of Williamsburg this month.

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Kim Deal with the Pixies in 2005.Credit
Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images

The band will not say how many more releases are in store, but, like “EP-1,” they are to come out through the Pixies’ Web site, with no advance notice. The EP’s, with artwork by Vaughan Oliver, the band’s longtime designer, will be available as downloads and as a 10-inch vinyl record. No longer on any label, the band now controls its business itself and has become a model of online marketing.

When asked why they decided to release music this way, the band and its advisers say that the album is a tired format that is tied to the needs of the old music business. “When you’re an artist like the Pixies, you don’t have to play by those rules,” said Richard Jones, the band’s manager. Mr. Thompson also acknowledges that it is a way to avoid somewhat the pressure of the Big Comeback Album.

The news of Ms. Deal’s departure was met with sadness but not much outrage online; maybe it was expected, sooner or later. But whether fans will embrace the new music and lineup is another story.

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“The whole charm of the reunion was that Kim and Charles had put their differences aside to play together again,” said Charles Aaron, the editor at large of Spin. “It made you feel like it was about the music and not just the money. Now that she’s left again, it’s going to be hard for a lot of people to take this seriously as the Pixies.”

If “Bagboy” is any indication, fans are still curious. The song was released as a free download just two weeks after the announcement of Ms. Deal’s departure. The first tweet came 22 seconds after the song was released, Mr. Jones said, and within 17 minutes, the song was being played on BBC radio. On Tuesday, “Indie Cindy” also made its way onto Twitter’s list of trending topics.

The Pixies’ tour begins on Monday in Los Angeles, and most of the shows the band has announced so far have sold out.